The Guardian reported June 17 that UK Defence officials issued a
confidential D-Notice (Defence Advisory Notice) June 7 to the BBC and
other media organisations.

D-Notices are official requests to news
editors not to publish or broadcast items on specified subjects on the
grounds of “national security”. They are issued by the Defence, Press and
Broadcasting Advisory Committee, which operates between government
departments dealing with intelligence and national security, and the
media.

The D-Notice was issued the day after the Guardian had
exposed, based on leaks provided by former US National Security Agency
(NSA) sub-contractor Edward Snowden, vast and systematic police-state
surveillance conducted under the Obama administration by the NSA. Its
purpose was to censor any further coverage.

The order is marked, “Private and Confidential: Not for publication,
broadcast or use on social media” and reads: “There have been a number of
articles recently in connection with some of the ways in which the UK
Intelligence Services obtain information from foreign sources.

“Although none of these recent articles has contravened any of the
guidelines contained within the Defence Advisory Notice System, the
intelligence services are concerned that further developments of this same
theme may begin to jeopardize both national security and possibly UK
personnel.”

The same day that the Guardian revealed the existence of the
D-Notice, and the G8 summit of world leaders opened in Northern Ireland,
the newspaper broke a
five-page story based on further documents made available by Snowden.
It catalogued the way that the British government, through its Government
Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) spy centre, had mounted an intensive
spying operation on foreign politicians attending two G20 summit meetings
in London in 2009.

It should be noted that the Guardian did not reveal the
D-Notice’s existence until it had been in operation for 10 days and first
made public on the British politics blog “Guido Fawkes.”

The Guardian claims “it is not clear what impact the warning
has had on media coverage of Snowden’s revelations relating to British
intelligence.” However, no other national newspaper has commented on the
issuing of the D-Notice and Foreign Secretary William Hague, the minister
responsible for GCHQ, was not asked about the Guardian ’s claims
about the UK governments’ spying when he appeared on BBC radio’s flagship
“Today” programme on the morning the article was published. A short item
on the story appeared at the end of the “Today” programme but there has
been no further mention, indicating that the BBC is fully on board with
the D-Notice.

The Guardian ’s UK spying operation story was ignored by most
national newspapers, including the Times and the Financial
Times, in their coverage of the G8 summit. Others gave it scant
attention. The Independent and the Daily Telegraph
published short, almost identical articles, which sought to brush the
story under the carpet. The Daily Telegraph merely noted that it
had “the potential to embarrass the Prime Minister [David Cameron] as he
hosts leaders from the world’s most powerful countries at the G8 summit in
Northern Ireland”. It has since completely dropped the story.

Commenting on the failure to follow up the Guardian ’s story,
Dominic Ponsford, the editor of Press Gazette, a magazine and web
site for UK journalists, pointed to the anti-democratic basis of the
D-Notice system, which has five separate, all-embracing standing notices
in place ready to enforce.

Ponsford stated, “My understanding is that Monday’s Guardian
coverage is seen as being in breach of DA Notice 5 [known as United
Kingdom Security & Intelligence Services & Special Services]. This
requests that editors seek advice from the DA Notice Committee secretary
before publishing details of: ‘specific covert operations, sources and
methods of the Security Service, SIS and GCHQ, Defence Intelligence Units,
Special Forces and those involved with them, the application of those
methods, including the interception of communications, and their targets;
the same applies to those engaged on counter-terrorist operations’”

Whilst the overwhelming majority of the media have complied with the
D-Notice and remain silent, the right-wing Daily Mail has
launched an open attack on the Guardian and its exposures using
explicitly anti-democratic and authoritarian arguments.

In an article published June 18 with the headline, “Shock horror!
Britain spies on other nations”, columnist Stephen Glover writes, “Five
pages of The Guardian newspaper were yesterday given over to what was
presented as one of the most outrageous scandals of modern times. Horror
of horrors, Britain has allegedly been bugging other governments.

“Whatever The Guardian, with its head in the clouds, may believe, the
British government has an obligation to protect this country’s strategic
and economic interests in a world in which foreign governments are
ruthlessly pursuing theirs.”

Glover continued, “If our security services weren’t trying to find out
the private thoughts of other key governments before important
international meetings, they would be failing in their duty.”

Enthusing over the BBC’s silence over the reports, Glover wrote, “Even
the BBC, which normally treats The Guardian as its house journal and
guiding star, has so far not followed up the paper’s latest overblown
revelations with as much enthusiasm as might have been expected.”

Glover concluded his piece by declaring that the interests of the
British ruling class were all-important and were being directly threatened
by the Guardian ’s exposures. “Don’t imagine the paper is being
naďve: it is far too sophisticated for that. Treachery is too strong a
word, but it is impossible to find any decent motive for what The Guardian
has done. These supposedly world-shattering revelations were intended to
damage the British government at the beginning of a crucial summit.”

A D-Notice was also served on the UK media in November 2010, two days
prior to WikiLeaks beginning publication of 251,287 leaked US embassy
cables. The cables exposed the real state of international relations, the
undercover criminal activities of the US and other governments.

That D-Notice stated, “aspects of national security might be put at
risk if a major UK media news outlet brought such information into obvious
public prominence through its general publication or broadcast.” It asked
editors to seek “advice before publishing or broadcasting any information
drawn from these latest WikiLeaks’ disclosures” and warned of the
“potential consequential effects of disclosing information which would put
at risk the safety and security of Britons working or living in volatile
regions where such publicity might trigger violent local reactions, for
example Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

The message was clear. The press were under orders not to say or do
anything to jeopardise the illegal and criminal wars of aggression in
which the UK was involved.

As well as the draconian D-Notice’s preventing the publication of
stories deemed detrimental to the “national interest”, the British ruling
elite presides over a legal system that includes “super-injunctions” that
allow wealthy individuals to do the same without anyone knowing of it.
Britain also has some of the most punitive libel legislation in the world.
What is being defended by such means is the “right” of the ruling class to
conceal their illegal and criminal practises from the population.

In the UK as in the US, the mainstream media as a whole is playing its
assigned role. The response of media outlets to the June 17 D-Notice is
ample proof that rather than exposing government criminality, their own
self-censorship serves to abet this criminality.